PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – The Marion County Sheriff’s Office says they are now investigating the deaths of a wife and husband after their bodies were found dead in their home last Thursday.
The devastating news comes just five months after KOIN 6 spoke with the wife about the suspicious passing of her mother Theresa Hethorn in Monmouth last November.
Now, 37-year-olds Kali Roque and Juan Roque-Delaguarda (also known as Braulio) met a similar fate at their house in Salem – leaving behind two beautiful children and a string of people who will deeply miss them.
“It’s incomprehensible. It’s beyond imagination. It just feels like a really bad dream,” said Roque’s brother Daniel Hethorn.
Stationed in Japan, Daniel says he received a call Friday morning in the same place he had taken a call from his sister receiving news of their mother’s death.
“I was in the exact same place in my house, when Kelly called me about our mom, and you know, it’s like that initial disbelief, like ‘There’s no way this is happening again,’” he said.
The Sheriff’s office says they received a call around 1 p.m. that the husband and wife had been found dead in their home.
While the Polk County District Attorney has yet to release any updates in the November case of Kali’s mother, Daniel said he and his sister had grown even closer while grieving through the investigation.
“We’d be going through something again together and it was like okay, when it gets really dark and sad, it’s like I have someone to hold my hand and help me through,” he said.
Despite living in Japan, Daniel says he had to get back to care for his sister’s two children – who he said meant the world to Kali.
“That was like her whole life was, ‘How do I make the kindest, gentlest, most caring, beautiful human beings that I can?’” he said.
Daniel described his sister as a champion of women’s rights and a social worker with a heart for taking care of people who was a shoulder to lean on when things got tough.
And as investigators work to uncover what led to these three family deaths in five months, it’s clear the similarities in these cases go beyond how the family was found, but in how deeply they will be missed by their surviving family and the community they served.
“I just want to make their lives as rich and full as their mom would have. Just try and give them the world that they deserve, and not the one that they are given,” Daniel said.
A GoFundMe has been set up to support the family and, specifically, the two children left behind after this tragedy.
KOIN 6 has put in a records request for the toxicology results in the case of Kali’s mother, which like this case, remains open.
KOIN 6 news is working to learn more.